Common Sense Crisis: How Cultural Views Shape Britain’s Politics

Britain's next general election may hinge on the elusive but widely invoked notion of "common sense," a concept that defies simple definition yet shapes political and social discourse across the country.

The term resurfaced prominently in debates surrounding the late academic Jason Arday, whose career was marked by fabrications that later unraveled, prompting scrutiny of those who had defended him. Critics questioned how reputable figures, including journalists and legal professionals, could persist in asserting claims that contradicted observable reality. Yet, as anthropological perspectives suggest, what one group dismisses as absurd may be entirely coherent within another’s framework of shared beliefs.

Anthropologist Juliet du Boulay, in her 1974 study *Portrait of a Greek Mountain Village*, illustrated this divide through a vignette involving a villager preparing Turkish delight. When offered a more orderly presentation of the sweets, the woman rejected the suggestion, insisting, "It’s not that you don’t agree, it’s that you don’t know." Her response underscored that common sense is not merely about rationality but about belonging to a cultural community where certain assumptions—often unspoken—go unchallenged.

Clifford Geertz, a leading cultural anthropologist, described common sense as a "cultural system" that varies widely across societies. For the Azande people of Central Africa, attributing misfortune to witchcraft is a self-evident explanation, just as attributing it to coincidence or physics would be in Western contexts. Similarly, Geertz argued that common sense functions as a "dummy variable," resolving inconsistencies by reinforcing existing worldviews rather than inviting deeper scrutiny.

This dynamic appears to have played out in the Arday affair, where defenders of his claims—despite clear evidence of deception—doubled down on their positions. What outsiders viewed as indefensible became, for them, a matter of shared conviction. The assertion that a critical investigation into Arday’s fabrications amounted to racist "lynching" may seem preposterous to many, but within certain progressive circles, it aligns with a broader moral cosmology where systemic forces like "racism" and "whiteness" explain perceived injustices. This worldview, like witchcraft for the Azande, provides a framework to reconcile contradictions without questioning its foundations.

The same principle applies to conservative perspectives. Recent proposals to ban first-cousin marriage, for instance, reflect a British common sense that such unions are taboo. Yet historical records show that first-cousin marriages were once common among England’s 19th-century elite, including the Darwin-Wedgwood and Macaulay-Trevelyan families, who leveraged such unions to consolidate social and economic power. The proposed ban, then, is less about enduring cultural norms than about redefining them in the present.

Political tribes on both the left and right invoke common sense to justify their stances, often framing their positions as inherently reasonable while dismissing opposing views as irrational. Yet anthropology reveals that common sense is not a universal standard but a culturally constructed one. What binds a community together is not the sensibility of its beliefs but their shared acceptance.

As Britain approaches a pivotal election, the contest may not be over which side possesses the truest common sense but over whose version of it will prevail. The outcome will depend on which cultural framework resonates most with the electorate—not necessarily because it is more logical, but because it is more *common*.